Thursday, January 27, 2005

THE TOP TEN FILMS OF ALL TIME THAT MADE A MAN OUTTA ME!

Can you imagine the audacity of some of these bloggers out there! Here they are, world-reknown with friends aplenty, promo records by the bushel and more marijuana than a Mexican peon can grow, and you can just betcha bottom dollar that these all-knowing blogomites just hafta go 'round making up top ten lists of their favorite films just so's all of us lowly bunsnitches can read about these cinematic excursions and live vicariously through the tastes and actions of said bloggers! Nothing really wrong there, 'cept when said blogger's tastes are about as exciting as your standard big city filmscribe's boho obscurer-than-thou pretensions...just snap here for an example of just how dullsville some flicker pickers' tastes can be (you may have to scroll down)...sheesh, the whole sordid episode just begs to ask the question "Are there enough arthouses and berets in Australia to sustain the uppercrust snootiness of at least ONE moom pitcher maven struggling for love and acceptance in the Antipodes?"

In order to clear the flatulence-laden dinge of the aforementioned top ten list, I thought I'd just drop a post your way as to my faverave films of all time. Frankly, I find this list a lot more real, down-to-earth and ultimately more satisfying than dribbling on about urban cowpokes and the Amerigan Experience at the dawn of the eighties and all that above-it-all hokum, and besides these films are a lot more fun too!

1) MANIAC (1934)

MANIAC was director Dwayne Esper and Hildegarde Stadie's brave attempt to cash in on the horror craze of the day with this totally off-the-wall look at mental illness wrapped in pseudo-Edgar Allen Poe. If Parker Tyler were really as on-the-spot as he thinks he was, this one would have been mentioned in his bright-yet-brainy book on underground cinema, only I think he was too intellecto to do such a thing and besides he died before film camp of this nature was lifted to an art level anyway.

2) BOWERY TO BAGHDAD (1955)

Leo Gorcey and the boys discover a genie in a lamp and grapple with a buncha gangsters who want to use the guy for their own nefarious purposes. Considering the locale where Gorcey and co. end up, the film may have a lot more meaning in today's political clime than it did back then. I'll bet Lillian Hellman shuddered seeing the fruits of her dark, socially-consiousness-riddled play evolve rather quickly into a series of quickie crank-out b-films displaying none of her Stalinist intent. Serves her right!

3) PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1957)

I coulda sworn I saw this one on tee-vee at age four on the afternoon horror movie show and shuddered in fear over the doom-laden music, spooky cemetery scenes and walking dead. Too bad I didn't get to see it age nine when I would have appreciated its science-fiction turned sideways tale of interstellar invasion. For me it has WAR OF THE WORLDS (Martians land, blow up things, die of disease and everything is all happy) beat all hollow.

4) STOP, LOOK AND LAUGH (1961)

Clips from Three Stooges shorts are shown between ventriloquist Paul Winchell mixing it up with his dummies (plus the Marquis Chimps a year before hitting the small screen in THE HATHAWAYS). Memorable film, not only because I like dummies and chimp humor, but because for years this was the only Three Stooges (w/Curly or anyone other'n the sixties features) that was shown on local TV. I remember Christmas Break '74 when channel 33 was hyping this film by running the trailer incessantly. Only trouble was that the film was being broadcast on the morning everybody went back to school...believe me, I was planning to play sick just to stay home and watch the thing, only my conscience got the best of me. Stupid conscience! Stupid programmers!!!!

5) THE SADIST (1963)

I've heard a bonehead compare this film to the works of Orson Welles, which kinda makes me wonder...when are all of these highly-praised and critically acclaimed films (mainstream or not) going to be compared to fun low-budget "trash" like THE SADIST??? Ace punk Arch Hall Jr. plays the Starkweather role in this straightforward crime film a lot better than Martin Sheen did in the oft-lauded BADLANDS, and I don't even think that Hall thought he looked like James Dean one bit unlike Sheen, who probably practiced his sneer in the mirror!

6) SATAN'S BED (1965)

It's hard to tell if this is aspiring to be one of those art house films that the laxative devil mentioned above creams his corn over or just two unfinished films crammed together. Vocalist Yoko Ono stars at least in one half of the film as a mail order bride who ends up getting beaten up by some guy who happens NOT to be a Beatles fan, while the other half stars these three hoods (including a lezbo) who go around raping women before the axe falls harder than if Ed Ames threw it. Maybe if Yoko didn't end up marrying the world's biggest gasbag she coulda continued starring in movies like SATAN'S BED, which would have been a lot more pleasing than sitting through a spin of SEASONS OF GLASS anyday!

7) THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Yeah, some of this tends to snooze and coulda been edited, but the action-packed scenes spill more blood and shard more skin than a dozen illegal cockfights. Besides, it's kinda neat watching respected actors from the forties and fifties like William Holden, Robert Ryan and Ernest Borgnine cussing and fighting in the amoralest of ways which must've had their old-timey fans scratchin' their heads in disbelief...

8) MACON COUNTY LINE (1974)

In the age of AMERICAN GRAFFITI and HAPPY DAYS, a more realistic approach to fifties "nostalgia" was taken in this great, non-pretentious drive in flick that was actually shown uncut on channel 21 back in the early-eighties...until somebody caught on and the remaining time was filled with LITTLE RASCALS shorts. Two brothers cheat and fornicate their way through the mid-fifties South, pick up some gal dressed like an extra from a Ma and Pa Kettle film, then end up in one of the Biblest parts of Georgia where they meet up with none other than Jethro Bodine as the local redneck sheriff. Then a bunch of guys who look like they were just kicked outta Ian Dury and the Blockheads show up in a 1950 Studebaker and kill the sheriff's wife, which is where the fun really starts...

9) THE NIGHT PORTER (1974)

Dirk Bogarde's this former concentration camp commandant hiding from the good guys in postwar Vienna working as a night porter in a hotel, surely a comedown from slaughtering millions only a short decade earlier. Meanwhile there are a whole buncha other nazi pervos and murderers also in Vienna, and all of 'em are keeping an eye on each other for obvious reasons. Then suddenly Charlotte Rampling (who must've starved herself for this role considering the flesh and bones look she has in the surreal Marlene Dietrich scene) re-enters Bogarde's life...y'see, she was a prisoner and Bogarde fell for her in a big way, and well, as the Everly Brothers once sang, "love hurts." At that time there were a whole slew of movies coming out that dealt with the subjects of love, lust and death, but THE NIGHT PORTER won't make you puke like some of the others will. It'll make you wanna run wild and kill people, but you won't get sick to your stomach!

10) HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1987)

This one had my sister gasping and saying "Chris, how can you watch this?" Actually, a good straightahead crime film that perhaps is marred not by the violent content, but by the boring, non-violent scenes (like where the dimwitted sister of Otis tells Henry about how her father sexually abused her...yawn, like we really needed that in this film!). Actually pretty neat despite a load of boring beret-heads flocking to this one as if it were some poetry reading or new intellectual Susan Sonntag (rest in pieces!) screed!

WAIT---THERE'S MORE!!!, mainly a review of the COMBAT! Season One, Campaign One box-set available through Image Entertainment.

You know, I should be insulted! Total angry and frothing at the mouth MAD over the way I've been misrepresented and pre-judged by a number of you people out there in computerland! And if you wanna know just how I've been run through the mill by a few of these people, just look at the way they've judged not only me, but the movies and tee-vee programs that I've championed in previous pages of my BLACK TO COMM fanzine! Take Jay Hinman f'rinstance...now, I don't wanna go picking any fights with him, but there was one thing he said in a posting on his blogsite that I think was more'n a bit misleading, and perhaps ON PURPOSE misleading rather'n "oops" misleading as well. Y'see, in a post dealing with something I don't want to get into here, Hinman mentioned what he considers my love of "Eisenhower-era television" or something like that which, although perhaps a totally innocent comment and all prima-facie like, may have been a heavily-packed slam of sorts. I mean, yeah, I do go for tee-vee shows of the Ike days (though my main love more or less lies in late-period Eisenhower through Kennedy through mid-Johnson administration television as any astute reader could tell ya!), but I have the sneaking suspicion that Hinman decided to use Eisenhower and Eisenhower only in his remark to portray to his readership that li'l ol' me is stuck in the oft-loathed "fifties" with all dem bad things that wuz happening in Li'l Rock and to commies and all that which ruined those days until young and shiny JFK appeared on the scene to set things straight! Like I said, maybe not, but I wouldn't put that past him. Even though Ike wasn't quite as staid as his image lent (after all, he was the one who sent the troops in to desegregate the aforementioned L. Rock, and beside ol' Ike was a reader/follower of Wilhelm Reich so he couldn't have been as Mister Rogers as everyone makes him out to be!), those images that moderne kiddies have pounded into their skulls re. the "fifties" (booo! hissss!) and what it stood for re. repeated viewings of ATOMIC CAFE sure don't do any good fer my image. It's like that reader who told me he thought I liked the fifties and its movies and tee-vee and automobiles and general gulcher because that was a time when women, minorities and gays were kept in their place by overbearing white males like me! Uh, I guess this reader never heard of things like great fifties trash culture and general Amerigan teenage FUN that hasn't been duplicated since (not to mention the good stuff like low crime rates and less polarization), but what can you expect from a generation that rejected everything that was good and wholesome (in a degenerate BTC way) and took the laziest, stupidest, most boring aspects of "youth" to heart in its stead?!?!?

Anyway, what I want to talk about right now is the burnt DVD set (sent courtesy Paul McGarry, who was front and center when it originally aired) of COMBAT! (the first half of the first season...you gotta pay more for the full thang!), a program that not only aired during the greatest years of not only television but of general low-fi living (1962-1967) but featured some of the best, high-energy intensity to be shown on television during those already-intense times. And intense COMBAT! is, intense as THE TWILIGHT ZONE or THE OUTER LIMITS not to mention THE FUGITIVE and NAKED CITY, and even more powerful than a long-forgotten fave like ONE STEP BEYOND. Believe me, this show was a powerhouse of energy and emotion, perhaps thanks in part to main director Robert Altman, who was certainly put to better use directing shows like this and M-SQUAD rather'n later yawnsville features like M*A*S*H which seem to wash away any sorta respect I might have for the man, which I don't even if he was a vital part of this series.

So, what was COMBAT! anyway? I'll tell ya what is wuz...nothing but the first and the best of the World War II-themed series that seemed to permeate television during the early-to-mid-sixties. Ya gotta remember that when COMBAT! debuted on ABC in the fall of '62, WW II had ended a only mere seventeen years earlier, yet enough time had elapsed that a television program dealing with them days was now a fresh enough idea (sorta like the rash of Vietnam War series that popped up in the eighties)...nothing "nostalgic" mind you, but let's just say it was now safe to milk those times with a hard-hitting, power-drenched show about the war. And after COMBAT!'s success more and more WW II series came, from THE RAT PATROL to GARRISON'S GORILLAS, and who could forget the infamous HOGAN'S HEROES with all those "lovable Nazis" that caused such an outrage. (Heck, I remember some kid I grew up with who thought the Nazis were cool with their uniforms and tanks and goosestepping after watching HOGAN'S HEROES, and I still recall the lecture I got from dad when all these shows were on about how bad them krauts were and how they killed Jews like my neighbors and all that [they didn't kill my neighbors but people like them over in Europe!]...it was kinda confusing because I wasn't even a fan of these shows at the time being more a sitcom and cartoon kid myself and don't recall saying anything pro-Nazi to anyone! Maybe he was just being pre-emptive!!!) Anyway, COMBAT! was yet another cool coup for ABC, which at that time was the "small" network with a buncha UHF stations that were little more than low-budget indie channels that happened to run network programming, but they sure made up for it with their fantastic schedules that mixed lowbrow, teenybop and innovation.

I think it 's cool how they had two stars of this show who more or less alternated as featured players every other week. Rick Jason (who later committed suicide after years of obscurity) stars as Lieutenant Hanley, a mature, perhaps reserved yet still wiry enough guy when the situation calls, while the great Vic Morrow (aka Artie West and a buncha tee-vee wiseguys before fighting in the Big One...only to lose his life and head making a comeback in a lousy attempt at them Baby Boomer dollars viz a viz the TWILIGHT ZONE revival) stars (or co-stars if it's Jason's turn) as Sergeant Saunders, a guy so cold-steel surly that you'd think the world would crumble if he merely smiled. The supporting cast is fine as well, from the cool Cajun called what else but "Caje" as well as Kirby, the strung out guy who always seems to be on the verge of losing his head, Littlejohn who for some reason flashes images of Steve Hesske into my brain probably because I think that's what Hesske looks like, not forgetting comic Shecky Greene as Braddock, the shifty conniving private who reminds me of Lou Costello to no end!

Yeah, some of this may show signs of early-sixties "consciousness" (like the episode with the "nice" Nazi, which brings back memories of that old MAD story about how Germans were portrayed in monsters in movies during the war yet twenty years later they were more or less made out to be confused and misunderstood, who was captured by Saunders and crew who can't come to the conclusion whether to let him go or kill him as they make their escape!), but thankfully any sorta deep introspection and intellectual blabbery is washed away by the energy, the intensity and the explosions and deaths galore (and even the familiar faces get snuffed on this show making things seem even more personal). All mixed with a strange sort of cameraderie and a depth that seems totally alien especially in these cyborg times.

Episodes that stick out in my mind...Albert Salmi as a tough sergeant who's giving the already-tough Saunders more'n a little grief (look for Ted Knight, better known as Ted Baxter on THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, as a Nazi!) only to make the ultimate sacrifice (the ending will leave you a bit stunned, perhaps even more stunned than Saunders himself!), plus the one where a soldier meets up with his doctor father in a small French village and discovers dad's playing footsies with the Germans also keeps you a bit on edge. Another COMBAT! that sticks out in my noggin's the one where Saunder's company get three new and inexperienced soldiers, one a pudge of a cook, the other a ballet dancer and the third a wise-cracking deejay whom I'm surprised Saunders didn't beat to smithereens the way this guy irritated not only Saunders but I'm sure most of the viewing audience to no end. I think I like this episode because these three "losers" eventually prove themselves to be true fighters (with the chubby ex-cook ultimately giving his life)...perhaps I tend to like these shows and films where the loser underdog types succeed, perhaps getting slaughtered in the process because I somehow see myself as the fast-failing nincompoops portrayed on screen and feel great when they vindicate themselves, but I don't want to play psychoanalyst like too many self-conscious pundits out there. I also got the same feeling in the episode where this middle-aged guy who had a comfy assignment in England joins up with Saunders and gang in order to make a dent in his lackluster existence, only to lose it all by the end of the program. Believe me, there's a lotta sweat, blood, sinew and pain on this program that I haven't seen anywhere in a long time!

If you're man enough to be reading this you MAY have a hankerin' for what I would consider classic tee-vee, and it ain't "Eisenhower-era" or what snob big city critics consider "The Golden Age" (to them 1949-1959 I guess)...the BLOG TO COMM GA is roughly 1957-1967, with the strongest years being 1959-1963 and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's fitting that COMBAT! debuted during the 1962-1963 season, one of the ten best ever (with THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES and McHALE'S NAVY debuting, plus it was the last year for not only LEAVE IT TO BEAVER but NAKED CITY, DOBIE GILLIS and HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL) and left us in '67, perhaps the final year of lingering early-sixties prime-time television coolness before it all slipped into a late-sixties dump that didn't crawl up and out until the early-seventies. Either way, I found these COMBAT!s a fine alternative to most of the rot available nowadays, and if you like a little power sans political piousness and Amerigan self-hatred you might love it as well.

Did anybody catch Dave Lang's most recent post regarding my digs at his rather pedestrian film tastes? Now, Davey boy is entitled to his opinions no matter how trite they may be, but for reasons we all should know it seems as if the "man" is a bit confused not only about cinema, but exactly what constitutes "populism" and "elitism." Dave, I wasn't making any comments about "the common man" (whatever that is) in my post, and can't believe you're so DENSE that you'd think I was. If you must know, I was looking at your list of flick faves as being mere postmodern twaddle (with URBAN COWBOY thrown in just to show that you love the everyday kadiddle as much as the rest of the uppercrust snobs out there BELIEVE they do) which postively wilts to my top ten of worth and might. If you could comprehend what you were reading in my post (though I doubt it), you could see that the films on my list SPAN both the beer-guzzlin' and sophisticado crowds as opposed to your one-dimensional stuck-on-yourself choices which I thought were more than a bit cringe-inducing. And if the common man's just a dolt, then the elitist is a mere stuck up knowitall intellectual who always seems too ignorant that his benevolent ways are what always lead to destruction and terror (all the while deluding himself of his "progressive" nature not realizing that he's merely the latest incarnation of the Hitler/Stalin human betterment campaign STILL getting a hefty push as we speak). Guess which camp I put YOU in, Dave! (And hey, I really like it when you write about me and don't even mention my name...what a classy fellow you have turned out to be, so above my groveling mud-slinging!) Besides, the only populism I go for is when it's spouted off by Pat Buchanan, and the only elitism I follow is that of H. L. Mencken. Have fun in Vietnam, and beware the tiger cage with your name on it.

You'd told me before about how Ike was supposedly a devotee of Wilhelm Reich, but where did you get that information? AFAIK Reich thought Ikewas a fan of his work after Ike used the phrase "atoms for peace" in a speech, but this seems no more substantial of a claim than Aleister Crowley claming that Churchill was a fan of HIS work due to using the V for victory symbol and apparently using a phrase that Crowley hadsaid in a speech. Is there any documentation?

Re: populism, I think the populism of a Manny Farber is definately akin to the spirit you're trying to capture. If you haven't read some of Farber's 1950s era film writing, you really should......

Mike-I got the "I LIKE REICH" information from Bill Shute a long time ago...can't remember the book he got this earth-shattering tidbit from, though I must admit that I find the Eisenhower/Reich information totally believable given my own impressions of Ike, unless Shute was pulling my leg. Bill, can you clarify this for us? And I will check out Farber on your recommendation.

I enjoyed the dreams and dream-analysis. Over the years, I have heard six or seven complete non-existent Kim Fowley albums in my dreams. I was enjoying them in my dream-world as much as I enjoyed OUTRAGEOUS or INTERNATIONAL HEROES or HOTEL INSOMNIA or FANTASY WORLDwhen I first heard them.If only I lived sometime in the future, when we might perhaps have the technology to "download our dreams."

Regarding Wilhelm Reich and Eisenhower (there's an interesting discussion of WR's "fantasy" view of Ikein Sharaf's book FURY ON EARTH), I can remember you and I talking about this back in the mid-1980's. My information came from two sources: 1) a friend in Denver whose father had worked with Eisenhower's son John; and 2) a doctoral student I met in some college town while travelling through the midwest in the 80's,someone who had spent a year or two going through Ike's papers and I think saw his notations on Reich's letters.It's been a long time, but I can say that both agreedon the following points:1) DE felt that WR was an interesting person and found some of his work, particularly that dealing with weather, of potential value;2) DE read all of WR's correspondence to him;3) DE wished that WR had not SOLD the orgone accumulators, and felt that he went too far by doing that, so that the Food and Drug Administration was only doing its job by coming down on him for fraudulent misrepresentation;4) DE was, at least prior to 1956, sympathetic to Reich.I know that what I said above is technically hearsay,and I took no notes at the time. Still, I found it interesting. Also, neither my friend's Dad nor the graduate student were Reich followers, so they had no reason to distort anything in WR's favor.By the way, when I was back in New England in 2003,I visited Rangeley, Maine, and Reich's ORGONON facility,with my teenaged children . It was a fascinating and inspirational place, and I'd recommend anyone in New England or Quebec take a day out of his/her schedule and visit it. Rangeley is an interesting little town--we stayed at a beautiful cabin-style motel on Lake Rangeley. The three of us all put our arms inside one of WR's own orgone accumulators (I'd always wanted to make one over the years, but feared I wouldn't do it right!). I'll let you try it for yourself and come to your own opinion about it!

While much of America was watching the Super Bowl today, I was doing something I know YOU would approve of: watching two solid hours of Leon Errol comedy shorts. Remember the one where Leon Errol's son,Leon Jr., elopes with a girl and winds up at the same hotel where Leon Sr. has gone to honeymoon with HIS new wife...AND Tom Kennedy is also there with his new young wife? Every possible permutation of these six people getting caught in each other's rooms is used. This is comedy at its purest!

Finally, some of the old free-jazz records from the French "America" label are being reissued by Universal Jazz France (I know you have or had some albums on AMERICA). I blasted the Frank Wright one, which I once had on vinyl, and that is amazing. Another one I got, which I never did have on vinyl, is Alan "Orgasm" Shorter's album TES ESAT, a quartet date with of all people GARY WINDO on tenor sax! I haven't played that one yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

Hey, I'm packing up to move (not from the area, just to another house as I'm getting married this summer) and I noticed that I have two copies of the 1953 Republic serial CANADIAN MOUNTIES VS ATOMIC INVADERS. Would you like my extra copy? It's cold-war serial action at its best as an invasion force of three (!!) representing an unnamed "foreign power" seek to destroy North Americaby striking in some fictional Northern Canada areabased on Yellowknife or Whitehorse. But they hadn't counted on facing down the RCMP!!

Hi Bill-We've got to stop meeting like this! Thanks for the Reich/Ike information...as I recall, you mentioned this to me sometime in the early-nineties or so and I was a bit surprised at the time, but not really anymore since finding out a few more things about our past prez. Anyway, it's nice to hear from you and find out that things are going swimmingly, and I will assume that your "children" (Eric is of college age, right? Boy do I feel ancient!) are well beyong the "poopy-face" and "your butt is rank!" stage they were ar when we last spoke! WELL beyond, I presume! (NOTE TO READERS: this is what Bill's kid used to call/say to ME! Talk about no respect!!!) And as for Leon Erroll...you've probably watched more of him last night that I've watched in the past seven or so years! Hate to say it, but my once-manic love of comedy shorts and old obscurities has waned a bit since we've stopped swapping tapes, books and the like, and since our household got hooked up to a satellite dish (after eons of UHF-only programming) I can't pry the folks away from the set even if I wanted to watch Vera Vague! Anyway, thanks for the offer of the serial...I could use it even though the VCR has withered away due to neglect over the years (too lazy to get the tracking device fixed)...do you still have that Columbia Shorts tape I lent you with the great Bert Wheeler pitted against Ben Weldon short? Sure could use that. Want anything in exchenge for the tapes, like the issues of BTC you've missed? You know where to write...-Chris